To Do, To be Done, To Ask Others To Do

Physics is a peer reviewed science. This means little pork (well, that isn't always true, but we like to think so).

As far as pork is concerned, ignorance is bliss. It is a political term; I don't know where it came from. But it is perfect. Pork is the grease that makes the political wheels run in Washington DC. Also known as "bringing home the bacon" -- it is what happens when a senator or a representative gets a money allocation put into a bill for the home district. For example, I understand in the last high way bill passed, Alaska's senator managed to get a 200 million dollar bridge built, affectionately labeled, the Bridge to Nowhere. A little pork probably is OK. There are certain local priorities that won't be seen on a national level but require national funding. One can imagine the back room conversation "Look, I don't like this provision, but I'm up for election this year and if I can tell my voters I got that bridge built then they will re-elect me and I can swallow that provision and I'll help you get this provision passed" or something. Of course, it has been getting out of hand for years (read the NY Times editorial).

The basic problem with pork is it goes against the old American principle of fairness. Who gets the money here is about who has the political power, not about who most deserves the money or what state most needs the project.

So if you don't allocate money by pork, how do you allocate it? Physics does it by peer review. Here is how it works, kind of...

• I write a proposal for some research and how much money I think I need to get it done. I submit this proposal to a funding agency -- usually the Department of Energy or the National Science Foundation (in my case it will be the NSF).
• They send the proposal out to several other scientists in my field for review. In many cases these people may know who I am. But the reviews are anonymous -- I get to see their comments, but I don't know who made them.
• Based on the results of the review of my proposal and the others submitted for the same program and how much money the NSF has to allocate, they will decide if they want to fund my proposal, and if so, to the tune of how many bucks!

But, it is more complex. For example, I have to review other people's proposals as well. Doing one of these proposal reviews justice actually takes quite a bit of time. If you don't directly know the person you have to go look up their work, perhaps talk to others in the field (without letting them know what you are doing). And you aren't paid for this, either.

Writing one of these things is no cake-walk either. I'm in the middle of it right now -- this is our group's big 3-year renewal. So we have to put together about 30 pages of budget justifications, research plans, etc. In the research plan we have to carefully explain what we did for the last 3 years and how cool it was and how we are going to also do lots for the next 3 years. This year I'm a bit more depressed about it than normal: given the current state of science funding we have to write a most excellent proposal in order just to keep our funding level constant. Not as much of an incentive as I'd like. Especially as I'm not really doing research work while writing this thing (obviously, with out the funding I can't hire graduate students, post-docs, etc. -- so it is very much connected with my research -- it just doesn't feel that way).

I also sit on the other side of the table. I'm associate editor for a peer-reviewed journal. When a paper is submitted for publication I have to find others to review it, collect their answers, and based on that make a recommendation for the paper. While there are papers in my queue I'd guess it takes about 45 minutes a day to do this.

BTW, we get paid for none of this.

At any rate, the reason I'm writing this is because I've had this grant proposal hanging over my head for the last two weeks and a few grant reviews as well and it seems like I'd rather dust the office than work on it. So writing this entry was just another way to avoid doing the work!

Comments

[claire.bertiaux]

PORK et pic. Stupid joke. Or perhaps personnal personnal and personnal.

All is Ok : physics of sound would be nice. It depends of the time of the day you use it.....
Comprenne qui pourra. Héhé.
I will read later this blog.

[Michael Schmitt]

Hi Gordon,

you describe the situation well, and there are many faculty who feel the way you do about the whole process.

Twenty years ago there was *lots* of money, relatively speaking, and sometimes the proposals were unbelievably poor. It was difficult to *lose* money, even if you accomplished very little. During the eighties the budget tigthtened, and the weaker groups began to suffer reduced funding. Many of the younger people thought this was actually good, since it sometimes happened that a group took on a responsability and then didn't deliver, thereby ruining run plans, etc. Other groups would have to step in and save the situation, and it could be frustrating.

Over the years, the shrinking budgets has gradually squeezed out the weaker groups, and forced everyone to perform well. Survival means that people write great proposals and it can be hard to criticize one when you have to review it.

We have passed from a situation when there were lots of experiments and a PI was limited by his time (there were very few "she" PI's then) to the present day in which all existing experiments are vital, some important and well planned experiments have failed to get funding, and now we have to consider a competition for funds between the LHC experiments, the Tevatron experiments, and the b-factories...

I believe the situation will remain like this (or even more difficult) for a few more years. As a community we need to persevere and do the most to make our existing projects successful - that's the only hope for increasing funding for the field. So, while writing and reading proposals is a pain, distraction and drain, we really need to pull together and make the system work. An analogy to maintaining the levees in New Orleans might be apt.

Anyway, I hope your proposal is a successful one!

regards,
Michael

[Gordon T Watts]

Michael, thanks -- and I hope that you are right that in a few years things will get better. But I think the only way that happens is if the gov't really believes that basic research is important for the US's future. I just don't see than attitude changing in the near future.